We were once a beautiful world, young and fertile. Nothing but hope and opportunity lay before us. We were the chosen ones of our creators and lived a lavish lifestyle. Until the All-Father revealed his jealousy of the love his children gave to their creation and not him. His wrath nearly wiped us out. Now we are the enslaved and oppressed in the Five Cities, or those risking it all in the Wastes. But there are some who call no place home. They wander between all places and live by their own rules. Will any of them rise up to become the mysterious heroes we need

Broken Ruler Games is pleased to announce the release of the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game‘s core rulebook in softcover, print-on-demand, and PDF. After six years of development, this high-octane action story game of gunslingers, samurai, barbarians, gangsters, and steampunk in a post-apocalyptic world of superpowers is ready to challenge your Writers with everything you need to start telling original stories in the One Land.

After a successful Kickstarter in 2017, HPS has already gone on to receive a Gold ENnie for High Plains Samurai: Legends as Best Free Game of 2017. With the new core rulebook, you’ll be able to run all the one-shots and campaigns you desire in this improvisational storytelling game where the dice determine complications, not success or failure.

With the HPS core rulebook, you get…

Complete rules for playing the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game

Create original characters of every type, from leads to extras

Build and expand on the Five Cities and the Wastes

Apply character roles to give your character a code of honour

Gain new perks from your homeland to help define your character’s background

Explore the history of Chaos’ Wrath and its aftermath

Discover the key initiatives for the One Land & meet its major characters, including every warlord and Black Scorpion

An advice chapter for all players, Directors and Writers alike

Tips on playing evil characters seeking to destroy the One Land

You can discover more about HPS at highplainssamurai.com, including the Atlas of the One Land, our ongoing series of actual play recordings, additional advice from the game’s creator, and so much more. The High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game is available now at DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, Amazon, and will soon be available through IndiePressRevolution.

As we prepare for the full launch of the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game, tales of intrepid heroes fighting back against tyranny have already begun to spread. Wanderers riding the Salvation tell of a lone warrior defending his favourite bar from a local gang seeking access to the tunnel running under Serenity Falls.

Tales From The One Land is a series of actual play recordings (both audio and video) revealing the action-packed excitement of HPS. Each session provides new players creating their own personal exploits with original characters and improvised storytelling to reveal one shared version of the One Land… a kind of HPS cinematic universe. For our first release, Todd and Vince (editor on HPS) sit down for a Session 0 to create a lead character, discuss the mechanics of the game, lay down some formats, and create some key initiatives. Enjoy and keep your eye on the High Plains Samurai website for future instalments.

August has been quite the month for everyone working on High Plains Samurai and it’s all culminated in this announcement…

You can pre-order your copy of the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game‘s core rulebook through BackerKit until September 15th.

As we work on updating our catalogue and information on the official HPS website, you can check out BackerKit for complete details on everything that’s available, including a couple of items that will not be sold outside of this pre-order campaign. This includes a black-and-white hardcover copy of the core rulebook and this stunning 24″ by 36″ playmat featuring a full-colour map of the One Land and a collection of tables and aides to help all players at the table. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be getting everything ready for the full launch in late October 2018. Stay tuned, qi warriors!

Our exclusive playmat is only available to Kickstarter backers and through our limited time pre-order campaign on BackerKit. Map by Jeff Brown.

Broken Ruler Games has won the Gold ENnie Award with High Plains Samurai: Legends for Best Free Game! Winning gold not only means we’ve received an award but that we received the most votes out of all the awesome candidates on the list this year and that astounds us the most. This was truly unexpected and we’re honoured to have received such esteemed recognition from the roleplaying community.

You can watch the exact moment on YouTube.

Thank you to Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games for accepting the award on our behalf and delivering the speech (even if he didn’t curse) and for Jason Pitre of Genesis of Legend Publishing for bringing it back across the border. There is not enough thanks to give to everyone who helped make this game possible but we are going to try over these coming days and weeks. It’s an exciting time as we get ready to launch the Backerkit portion of the final release for the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game‘s core rulebook (stay tuned for that).

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and nominees and a special thank you to everyone who voted for HPS.

If you haven’t heard yet, High Plains Samurai: Legendsis nominated for a 2018 ENnie for Best Free Game and voting has just begun. As one of the more than 1,000 people who have a copy of HPS Legends sitting in their computer or tablet, we’re counting on all of you to help us turn this nomination into an award as we prepare to release the core rulebook for the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game.

This is Broken Ruler Games’s third product to feature on an ENnies list over the past five years (with two nominations, including this one and ScreenPlay: The Rehearsal Edition, and a Judges’ Spotlight for Killshot: The Director’s Cutin 2013). It has been our absolute pleasure to bring these games to light with the people who have made this possible, but it has also been our responsibility to ensure everyone gets a high quality game that pushes my skills as a game designer, publisher, and pushes your experiences as a fan of roleplaying games. Your vote for High Plains Samurai: Legends will help us accomplish an important goal for the future of Broken Ruler Games – to win a major award in an open-voting category. That means every vote counts.

It is with great excitement and anticipation that we share with you this announcement. High Plains Samurai: Legends has been nominated by the ENnies as one of the past year’s Best Free Games and we are extremely humbled by this recognition. Sitting along with some great companions (or is that… competition?) such as Esper Genesis, Sage of the Goblin Hoard, and Forthright, this is the third nomination in this category for Broken Ruler Games. And we’re feeling lucky.

Thank you to everyone who helped make HPS Legends what it is and congratulations to all the nominees.

Thanks to our membership with the IGDN, there will be games of High Plains Samurai: Legends available at both Origins and GenCon this year… but we need Directors (GMs) to run them for us. Due to numerous reasons, attending these cons ourselves is not a possibility and so we’re more than happy to help sweeten the deal.

If you’re interested in running HPS Legends at either of these cons, please send Todd an email and let him know which of the current slots for either Origins or GenCon you can handle. We’ll take care of the rest. And for your generosity, we’re going to provide you with a print copy of HPS Legends as well as a digital “Director’s Care Package” with all the cheat sheets, character notes, and handouts you’ll need to run your game with style.